The Beatles is the tenth studio album by The Beatles, released in 1968. "The White Album" is the unofficial title for this album, and it owes its nickname due to the completely white album cover. Nowadays most people refer to this nickname rather than the official title.

The White Album was the Beatles' first double album. The songs feature a lot of variation in style and mood. Overall the record sounds almost like a compilation record featuring the band members as solo artists instead of a unity. Indeed, it was a Troubled Production, complete with Ringo leaving the band for a while (Paul McCartney took over on drums for "Back In The USSR" and "Dear Prudence", and John and George also recorded drum tracks for "Back In The USSR"). From this album on Yoko Ono made herself present next to John in the studio and this certainly caused even more tensions, seeing that the band had always recorded with them four alone.

Though not as popular as other Beatle records like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band or Abbey Road, the White Album is still a huge inspiration for numerous rock bands. When something gets compared to the White Album, it's almost invariably a shorthand way of saying "long album with huge Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly variety of styles, inevitably will attract complaints about Album Filler". But everyone agrees it is an important and influential record that nevertheless is still a serious contender for other albums often claimed to be the band's Magnum Opus. It generated hits such as "Back In The USSR", "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "Obla-Di Obla-Da" and "Revolution" (though the single version is a totally different arrangement). "Helter Skelter", "Happiness Is A Warm Gun", "Sexy Sadie" and "Blackbird" have become fan favorites, while "Revolution # 9" is perhaps the most notorious and audacious track: exciting for Avant-garde Music fans and Album Filler to most other people. Time Magazine included "The White Album" in their 2006 list of 100 timeless and essential albums.

Also got some notoriety because Charles Manson misinterpreted some lyrics from the songs "Piggies", "Revolution 9" and "Helter Skelter" to order his followers to go on a murdering spree.

"Trope-La-Di, Trope-La-Da, Life goes on, brah":

Aborted Arc: Despite being called "The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill" the song just ends and isn't referred anywhere else on the album.

Absentee Musician: This album is remembered partly for being the start of the dissension that led to the breakup of the band. That's partly reflected in the track list being, to a certain extent at least, the product of four solo artists. Only 15 of the 30 songs on the album feature all four Beatles playing.

"Back in the U.S.S.R." and "Dear Prudence" had Paul playing drums after Ringo temporarily quit the band.

McCartney recorded four "solo" songs on the album in which no other Beatle appears: "Wild Honey Pie", "Martha My Dear", "Blackbird", and "Mother Nature's Son". John Lennon, who hated it when Paul recorded by himself, appears all by himself on "Julia", the only Beatles song which Lennon did solo.

Ringo's "Don't Pass Me By" features Ringo, Paul on bass and piano, and a session violinist. Paul's "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" also features only Paul and Ringo.

George does not play on "I Will". John doesn't play on three of George's four songs, "Piggies, "Long, Long, Long", and "Savoy Truffle". (He apparently did contribute a backing vocal to "Piggies".)

The sound collage "Revolution 9" features studio chatter from John and George, as well as Yoko and others, but nothing from Paul or Ringo.

"Good Night" features none of the Beatles playing, but instead is Ringo singing over a bunch of session musicians.

Affectionate Parody: Several songs on this album imitate a certain musical style and whether these songs are a homage or a parody (or both) are left to the individual listener's opinion.

Age Progression Song: "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" where the singer Desmond meets a girl named Molly, marries her in the second verse and they raise a family afterwards.

Album Filler: A subject of debate even before the album was released. George Martin asked the Beatles to trim it down to one album since he felt there was too much filler, but the band didn't listen, being eager to fulfil their album commitment to the EMI record label as quickly as possible, and being unable to agree which songs to remove (Harrison noted that by that point there was "too much ego" involved). Every listener will have his or her own list of which songs on this album are a case of Throw It In and there have even been bootleg editions of this record where the set list has been rearranged and songs that are considered filler have been removed. Paul McCartney for his part liked the album just as it was.

Call Back: The lyrics of "Glass Onion" consist almost entirely of references to the band's previous songs, including "I Am the Walrus", "She Loves You", "The Fool on the Hill", "Fixing a Hole", "Lady Madonna" and "Strawberry Fields Forever". In the case of "The Fool on the Hill", the song even includes a little snatch of flute as a musical echo of the original's introduction.

There's a reason Ringo shouts "I GOT BLISTERS ON MY FINGERS!" at the end of the White Album version.

Evolving Music: "Revolution" and "Revolution 1", two very different takes on the same song. Lennon brought the "slow" version of the song to the rest of the band, thinking it would be the next single. The other Beatles rejected it, thinking it was too slow. Lennon responded by re-arranging it to be one of the hardest-rocking songs of his career. The original, more mellow version appeared on this album as "Revolution 1". The harder version appeared on the B-side of the "Hey Jude" single as "Revolution".

Good Grief, Another "Peanuts" Shout-Out!: An unintentional example. An American weapon magazine used the headline "Happiness Is A Warm Gun", in reference to the Peanuts phrase "Happiness Is A Warm Puppy". John Lennon, not knowing the origin of the phrase, used the headline as the title of the song "Happiness Is A Warm Gun".

Great White Hunter: Bungalow Bill in "The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill" is a subversion, since he is actually quite pathetic.

Hidden Track: "Can You Take Me Back", the song fragment included at the end of "Cry Baby Cry", which to this day doesn't even have an official title. (It's actually an edited bit from an improvised jam in-between formal takes of "I Will".)

Indecisive Parody: "Yer Blues". Lennon wrote it as a parody of the English blues scene, but the song rocks so hard that it succeeds on its own terms as a straightforward rock tune. Beatles scholar Ian MacDonald characterized "Yer Blues" as "half-satirical, half-earnest".

In Harmony with Nature: "Mother Nature's Son", where a "poor young country boy" is completely in harmony with the tranquility of nature.

The Insomniac: John narrates his real life trouble with this on "I'm So Tired", which could be seen as a bitter sequel to "I'm Only Sleeping" from Revolver

Interplay of Sex and Violence: The song "Happiness Is A Warm Gun" has Lennon singing about holding a gun in a tongue-in-cheek erotic manner: "When I feel my finger on your trigger/ I feel nobody can do me no harm".

Kill the Cutie: The little piggies in "Piggies" are whacked down and eaten by the bigger piggies.

"Long, Long, Long", which is played at a lethargic pace for the most part, then ends with George wailing while Ringo's drums try to follow him, suddenly ending with a drum thud.

"Helter Skelter" is a different sort of Last Note Nightmare, as it finishes with Ringo throwing his drumsticks across the room and screaming "I GOT BLISTERS ON MAH FINGERS!!" The version that wound up on the "White Album" was the 18th take of the day. That explains the blisters.

"Cry Baby Cry" is already a haunting track, but then out of nowhere Paul is heard singing "Can You Take Me Back?", which is a reprise of "Honey Pie" two tracks earlier, but here it just sounds as if he is fading away out of existence. Made worse by the fact that the next track is "Revolution 9", which is a last note nightmare from beginning to end.

Lighter and Softer: "Revolution 1", compared to the single version. Musicologist Alan Pollack even writes in his commentary that, even though the single version was recorded afterwards, "Revolution 1" sounds to him like a parody of the single version.

"Wild Honey Pie" repeats the line "honey pie" over and over, with the line "I love you" at the end. (Not to be confused with a separate song on another side of the double album called "Honey Pie", which is done in a totally different style, with the "normal" amount of lyrics.)

"Revolution 9". While "Revolution 1" is a nice, slow, relatively tame rock song (especially compared to the harsher single), "Revolution 9" is eight minutes of pure, untapped, minimalist cacophony. This was explained later via a bootleged version of Revolution 1, known as "Revolution 1 Take 20". This recording shows that "9" was formed out of the original coda of the song, where the outro vamp just kept going and going until the tape loops and dialogue samples take over the music itself. Lennon's intent was to make it sound like an actual revolution was taking place because of the song.

Mohs Scale of Rock and Metal Hardness: Side Three contains some of the hardest rocking the band ever did. "Helter Skelter", probably the band's single hardest song, is rated a 6 by TV Tropes.

Momma's Boy: The title character of "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill" is "the all-American bullet-headed Saxon mother's son." And behind that tough exterior, he really does rely on his mom's defence when people start to question him - hence why he always brings her along on hunting trips "in case of accidents."

Mood Whiplash: The tracks themselves are juxtaposed in such a way that they change moods all the time, but some songs even have sudden mood changes in themselves.

"The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill" starts off with a Spanish sounding guitar solo, then out of nowhere skips to a Cold Open where the refrain "Hey Bungalow Bill" is sung. Near the end applause can be heard, until John suddenly shouts: "Ey-O".

"Happiness Is A Warm Gun" has three different mood changes, mostly because Lennon actually took three different songs he had and stringed them together into one.

"Revolution #9".

Mundane Made Awesome: "Martha My Dear", which was actually written for Paul's dog. "Glass Onion", just a bunch of Beatles references. "Savoy Truffle" about eating too much candy. "Helter Skelter" a heavy rock song about a slide in an amusement park. "I'm So Tired" about being tired. And yet they are all great sing-a-longs.

Murder Ballad: "Rocky Raccoon" where Rocky is shot down, "Piggies" where a bunch of pigs are whacked down and eaten.

The Parody/Affectionate Parody: The song "Back In The USSR" is both a parody of Chuck Berry's "Back In The USA" and a decent imitation of The Beach Boys' "Surfing Sound," and the part that begins "Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out" is a direct send-up of "California Girls."

Pep Talk Song: "Dear Prudence" ("the sun is up, the sky is beautiful and so are you."), "Martha My Dear" ("hold your head up, you silly girl"). Even "Revolution" tells us "don't you know it's gonna be alright?"

An actual F-strike in "Revolution 9", "join the fucking navy and went to sea...". Of course, most listeners will be too busy freaking out to notice.

Protest Song: Subverted with "Revolution", a protest about protesters (and specifically those supportive of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, in John's "Chairman Mao" reference" - this may specifically refer to then-recent May '68 general strike and protests in France, where many student protesters marched holding up pictures of Chairman Mao).

Double subverted in "Revolution 1", where Lennon realized that he didn't actually know if he was for or against the protesters.

"Dear Prudence" was inspired by Prudence Farrow, Mia's sister, who kept inside meditating while the group was in India. Lennon wrote the song to urge Prudence to come outside.

"The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill" was a tiger-hunting man they met in Rishikesh. Lennon felt so disgusted by him that he wrote this mocking musical rendition about him.

"Julia" was about John's mother, who died in a car accident when he was a teenager.

"Sexy Sadie" was directed towards the Maharishi, the guru with whom the band spent some time in 1967 and 1968 and who was later accused of molesting one woman, infuriating John. Originally, the song was to have been an even more blatant attack (John had become generally disillusioned with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi during their time in India), but it was toned down to avoid offending George, who was still an admirer. All he really did was replace every instance of "Maharishi" with "Sexy Sadie".

Rearrange the Song: The album version of "Revolution 1" sounds radically different in musical terms compared to the music single version. While the album version is slow and soothing, the studio version has a loud, heavy sound.

The ending of "Long Long Long" is way scarier. A wine bottle that was placed on the Hammond organ's Leslie speaker began to shake when Paul hit a certain note. Deciding to leave it in the recording, George added the wailing voice and Ringo threw in the ominous snare roll. It sounds like a coffin is closing at a funeral while the widow weeps.

Self-Backing Vocalist: Paul on "I Will" and "Wild Honey Pie". John, who usually didn't do this, had a duet with himself (interpolating lines) on "Julia".

Self-Titled Album: The Beatles, although pretty much everyone knows it better as "The White Album".

"Savoy Truffle" lists a lot of actual flavors of chocolate, and is also a joke about Eric Clapton's weakness for chocolate.

In "Yer Blues" Lennon claims to be "just as suicidal as Dylan's Mr. Jones"". This is a reference to "Ballad of a Thin Man" from Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited.

"Happiness Is A Warm Gun" was inspired by a title in a rifle magazine. Unbeknownst to Lennon the title itself was a Incredibly Lame Pun on the phrase "Happiness Is A Warm Puppy" from the Peanuts franchise.

"Revolution 9" has musical quotes from Jean Sibelius' "Seventh Symphony" (the finale), Robert Schumann's "Symphonic Studies" (the finale, played backwards), Ludwig van Beethoven's "Choral Fantasy", the musical standard "The Streets Of Cairo", violins from "A Day In The Life" (from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band) and the Arabic song "Awal Hamsa" by Farid al-Atrash and unused shouts of "right" and "alright" taken from a long jam from an unused take of "Revolution 1".

Song Of Song Titles: "Glass Onion" name-checks "Strawberry Fields Forever", "I Am the Walrus", "Fixing a Hole", "Lady Madonna"'' and "The Fool on the Hill".

Special Guest: Eric Clapton plays lead guitar on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" (because Harrison thought the presence of a respected outsider would get everyone to stop arguing for a while; reportedly, it worked); famed session musician Nicky Hopkins plays piano on "Revolution" and a few other tracks; engineer/producer Chris Thomas plays the harpsichord on "Piggies"; and jazz musician Jack Fallon provides the fiddle on "Don't Pass Me By".

A lot of the Beatles' friends and significant others were roped in to contribute. Mal Evans does backing vocals and handclaps on "Dear Prudence", handclaps on "Birthday", and he and John made a bunch of harsh trumpet noises on "Helter Skelter". "Birthday" also included backing vocals from Pattie Boyd and Yoko Ono, and Ringo Starr's wife Maureen Starkey sang backing vocals on "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill"'alongside Yoko, who also contributed Spoken Word in Music and tapes and sound effects to "Revolution 9". And that''s not even counting all the session musicians.

This album actually has the only fleeting moment where a non-Beatle performs lead vocals: the second verse of "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill", where Yoko Ono sings "Not when he looked so fierce" (with John adding "His mummy butted in"), and singing "If looks could kill it would've been us instead of him" alongside John.

"Revolution 9" is almost nothing but stock sound effects and snippets from dialogues, sometimes heavily distorted and/or played backwards.

Studio Chatter: The end of "Piggies", the beginning of "Revolution 1", and most famously Ringo's "I'VE GOT BLISTERS ON MY FINGERS!!!" at the end of "Helter Skelter".

Stylistic Suck: "Yer Blues" is deliberately written as an amateur Blues Rock song, parodying British musicians who tried making blues songs of their own despite not being familiar enough with Blues culture. Therefore, instead of authentic blues metaphors and idioms, it has both overly straightforward lyrics about being depressed and blues-like metaphors and idioms that try to sound authentic but mean nothing. And then there is the solo... or rather, the two solos played simultaneously.

Lennon later admitted that the lyrics were inspired by his own Creator Breakdown, as the song was written while he was "trying to reach God and feeling suicidal" but he deliberately made them as over-the-top as possible so that if anyone worried and asked, he could pass the song off as just a parody. The parody aspect also comes from Lennon's own wish to write a Blues song but not being sure if he was capable of imitating the blues musicians he listened to in school, making him opt instead to parody the British blues-rock boom at the time.

Sweet Tooth: "You'll have to have them all pulled out after the 'Savoy Truffle'!" (allegedly inspired by Eric Clapton's fondness of chocolate)

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